XII Rubus & Ribes Symposium

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Every four years the ISHS convene a Rubus & Ribes Symposium, often with a guided pre-symposium tour that visits commercial growers.  In late June Meiosis attended this year’s event, the pre-symposium tour started in Germany from Frankfurt on Sunday 23rd June and headed south to Lake Constance in Switzerland over a three-day period.  Last month’s heat wave coincided with this, Mark Coxeter reported that his tour bus was extremely hot and humid much like a mobile sauna!

The tour through the beautiful Upper Rhine Valley was very interesting with visits to a number of significant raspberry, blackberry, redcurrant and gooseberry growers.  The actual symposium was a three-day event that took place in Zurich at the excellent ETH Centrum venue from Wednesday 26th – 28th June. This was a useful meeting place for Meiosis staff to meet with scientists, berry breeders and industry colleagues.

Meiosis Team 

Open Tunnel Day in Poland

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Meiosis attended the first ‘Strawberries in Tunnels’ day organised by Jagodnik magazine & Haygrove in Michalowice, near Warsaw.

The project’s main objective is to promote tunnel cultivation and to compare ~20 different junebearer varieties in both substrate and soil cultivation, including: Elegance, Magnum, Malling™ Centenary, Malling™ Sunrise, Wendy and Vibrant from Meiosis portfolio.

The event included trade stands from various companies and was well attended by local growers.  There were many interesting presentations on the use and benefits of various fertilisers, biostimulants, plastics, tunnels etc, while the results from the variety trial will be helpful for local growers in choosing which of the many available varieties are suitable for their particular cultivation and market requirements.

Meiosis Team

Meiosis managed Malling™ Centenary hit 60 million plant sales

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We are pleased to share an article published by Michael Barker on 7th February on fruitnet.com:

‘Sixty million sales milestone for Malling Centenary

NIAB EMR-produced strawberry variety passes sixty million annual plant sales mark just five years after first hitting the market

Introduced in 2013, Malling Centenary was developed at the East Malling Breeding Club, based at NIAB EMR in Kent. The organisation says the variety is in demand from growers and major international retailers owing to its very high percentage of Class I fruit and reduced picking costs. It also scores highly in consumer taste trials when compared with the standard Elsanta.

“The rapid growth in Malling Centenary sales also reflects its outstanding performance on the supermarket shelf,” said Mario Caccamo, NIAB EMR’s managing director. “We recently passed total sales of 70 million plants and we can now confidently expect the variety to pass that figure [with] next year’s sales alone.”

Malling Centenary is the fastest-selling strawberry variety handled by soft-fruit IP management company Meiosis, whose chief executive Mark Coxeter added: “The growth for Malling Centenary is set to continue as it further establishes itself as the standard June-bearer variety in the northern hemisphere.”

Gross royalties of nearly €1.4 million will be generated for the members of the East Malling Strawberry Breeding Club who originally invested in the development of Malling Centenary, NIAB EMR revealed. The total royalty returns to date have already exceeded the original investment to breed the variety, it added’.

http://www.fruitnet.com/fpj/article/177805/60m-sales-milestone-for-malling-centenaryhttp://www.fruitnet.com/fpj/article/177805/60m-sales-milestone-for-malling-centenary

Fresh Produce Journal

Berry Trend Jubilee XV edition in Krasnik

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Jubilee XV Berry Trend edition took place in Krasnik on 16th and 17th of January 2019. Although regional, the trade show, and the conference abundant in variety of talks, attracted many visitors.

Meiosis particularly welcomed the talk offered by Mr Krzysztof Sak of Agronom Plants. We were pleased to see a propagator related to us, who with such involvement shared the importance of protecting the Breeders’ rights to varieties. Mr Sak explained in detail the process of bringing a new variety to the market and consequences arising from breaching the Breeders’ rights.

We listened with interest to the talk of Dr Jan Danek, presenting the strawberry breeding programme in NIWA Brzezna, that aims to find a replacement to Senga Sengana, a variety decreasing in popularity within the processing market, which in Poland reached a significant 170.000 tonnes mark in 2017.

Dr Paszko from the University of Life Sciences in Lublin concentrated on profit achievability, comparing fruit production of strawberry everbearers to primocane raspberries. We were glad to hear that two new everbearers, Malling™ Champion and EMR639 (both from East Malling strawberry Breeding Club) offered by Meiosis, showed a potential crop of 25 tonnes per hectare. Malling™ Champion will be officially launched in July of 2019.

Alexander Yaraeshchenko from the Ukrainian Horticulture Institute presented an overview of the fast-developing Ukrainian berry market. Interestingly, the second biggest plantation territory, after strawberries, is taken by blackcurrants, just before raspberries. Blueberry and honeysuckle production have a potential to grow significantly in a short time, even though the markets receiving the fruit are not yet well established.

We would like to thank the organisers of Berry Trend fair for their professional approach and wish them many more jubilees to come.

Meiosis Team

TSW Fruit & Vegetable Industry Fair in Poland

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The annual TSW Fruit & Vegetable Industry Fair took place in Nadarzyn, Warsaw, on 9th & 10th of January 2019. This, the biggest industry event in Central Europe, gathered 386 exhibitors (60 more than in the previous year!), housed 60 industry-related talks, including the 6th strawberry conference, and attracted 14,735 visitors.

For the first time Meiosis Ltd attended the show as visitors rather than exhibitors, which allowed us numerous meetings with our friends.  At the same time another important event, ISFC, was taking place in the Netherlands, and some busy people managed to attend both events.

We had a very useful and informative meeting with our licence holders and associate members on the first day of the show, during which we presented details of the new varieties in the Meiosis portfolio.

We would like to thank all those who welcomed us to their stands and shared and discussed their joys and experiences. We truly believe that occasions such as this strengthen our relationships.

We were pleased to learn that new local strawberry breeding programmes of junebearers and everbearers are being introduced.

We are grateful to the organisers for preparing such an important event, and for providing us with a meeting room.  We are already looking forward to next year’s jubilee 10th edition of TSW which will take place on 9th & 10th  January 2020.

Meiosis Team

 

Meiosis at ISFC

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Members of the Meiosis team attended the 9th International Soft Fruit Conference on 10th and 11th January in the Netherlands.  The conference, organised by BVB Substrates and Delphy, has grown significantly from the early years, and there are now 94 exhibitors.  The programme of presentations at Den Bosch was impressive and included subjects as diverse as the berry market, robotics, growing technology and pest & disease control.

There was also a fascinating field trip to the Delphy Improvement Centre, and the WUR Wageningen University Research Centre in Bleiswijk, where glasshouse-based trials work was presented, with a focus on the use of LED lights to crop strawberries, raspberries and blackberries in winter.

It was great to see such a large number of international visitors, and we were able to have many useful and interesting meetings with growers, propagators and plant breeders.

An excellent start to 2019 !

Meiosis Team

New NSA Website

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Many of you are probably aware that the parent company of Meiosis is the Nuclear Stock Association Ltd, often referred to as the NSA.

The NSA has recently updated its website, the new format is user friendly and clearer for visitors to navigate.

The use of high health planting stock is essential if propagators and their fruit grower customers are to achieve the best from a variety. The NSA provides testing and maintenance of high health Strawberry and Raspberry stock of a wide range of varieties. Strawberry mother plants and runner tips, raspberry plug plants, buds and root are grown to order and can be supplied at Pre-basic, Basic 1, 2, 3 and 4 health grades.

Whether you are looking for variety health testing, a supply of certified planting stock, a Fruit Propagation Certification Scheme (FPCS) application form, access to the Register of certified stocks in England & Wales, or just want to know who the NSA are, please do visit the NSA’s website https://www.nsa-plants.co.uk/what-we-do/ and take time to browse through its content.

The NSA is always happy to discuss mother stock supply (email: admin@nsa-plants.co.uk), or you can make contact via Meiosis.

Meiosis & NSA Teams

 

 

 

 

Happy Holidays

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We would like to wish all our licensees, friends and customers a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

Meiosis Team

We have said good bye to our fax machine

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With sadness, we would like to inform you that due to the recent change of telephone lines our fax machine is no longer in use.

Should you wish to send us documents, please do so by using our individual email addresses or the generic email: meiosis@meiosis.co.uk

Meiosis Team

Meiosis trip to Mexico and Guatemala

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This last end of October and beginning of November we had the chance to visit our triallists in Mexico and Guatemala.

We were pleased to see how our raspberry and blackberry plant material is developing in those two countries, especially the blackberry selections from the Brazilian breeder EMBRAPA.

It was also interesting to see the new raspberry varieties developing in different areas of Mexico (Central Mexico and Baja California) under different climate, soil and management conditions.

Hoping for the best for the future and thank you to all the people that were involved in our visit!

Meiosis Team